I came out of the woodwork to help out at this tournament, and I ended up running stats. Anyway, some quick results: Division 1: Six teams played a double round robin. The fifth and sixth teams played twice, and the top four teams (Penn, Maryland A, VCU, and Virginia) played a mini-round robin. As o...

Wow, that's exactly like how our semifinal in New Orleans ended up, with a five point game, and a replacement question (only difference was that it was a 10 point game, that Chip changed to make it a 5 point game, deleting our five points because of the "bling-bling" incident). I am a regular quizb...

Good god people, just man up and skip your graduations. That's what i keep telling them, Henry. But apparently Ryan and Seth already said "absolutely not" and Trey basically has said that it's too big of a deal to the family for him to skip. I guess we'll see. I was under the impression that teache...

Ad hoc consolation games are pretty much mandatory in a tournament where you A: don't know how many teams want to play consolation games and B: have more consolation teams arriving after their elimination from the playoffs. Those two problems will have to be remedied for the consolation rounds to i...

...I wonder if Jeopardy! is aware of this, and whether or not they would care that their researchers' hard work is being so misused. I would guess they likely don't care, and even if they did there is (sadly) little that can be done. If Jeopardy! did care, they have the legal resources to send Chip...

I'm just asking so that students know whether or not they can publicly comment on the questions Saturday or Sunday night. Rather than assume or attempt to ascertain a time after which you may discuss the questions, it is best to wait until the "all clear" has been given from the tournament director...

...I don't want to make a huge deal about this, because PACE NSC is a great tournament despite this minor flaw, but I'm not sure why we can't agree that it is a flaw and that it could be fixed if the Tournament Directors wanted to fix it. Yes, this is a flaw that can easily be fixed, and we can arg...

Members of the Pre-Nationals Top 25 attending each of the 2008-2009 national championship tournaments: PACE National Scholastics Championship: 22 out of 25 (all except: #18 Detroit Country Day, #20 Bergen County, #25 James Island) NAQT High School National Championship Tournament*: 19 out of 25 (all...

This is the second time in the last few months you've posted a paranoid post about how you're not bringing laptops to anything. I think we get the message. I fail to see how this addresses anything I wrote. How about you explain why I am paranoid instead of firing off a ad hominem one-liner and sni...

Bringing laptops to tournaments is another issue. I didn't want to start a separate thread for this, but it doesn't make sense to me to let someone else use your laptop for a 5 or 10 dollar discount. I will start by outlining the major difference between laptops and buzzer systems. - Laptops are us...

I have a question about lames: Can someone recall whether lames have been used in an academic tournament? I ask because the concept of a lame is not necessarily a trash concept. Rather, it just seems that way because they are almost exclusive to trash tournaments. I have seen many more general argum...

One option not in the poll is late March. All of the college/open national tournaments tend to cluster in April, due to finals being in May and spring breaks in March. They also tend to avoid Easter because that weekend would see lowered attendance due to people hanging out with their families. Here...

I was not actually talking about tournament format, although that would be interesting. The question was mostly prompted by random thoughts about the fact that there aren't "post-national" high school events in the same way that there are on the college level. I guess what I was trying to say was "...

For those teams that did not show up Sunday without notifying anyone organizing this tournament: shame on you! How about you think about what you are taking away from others before rudely going AWOL on the teams you are scheduled to play. While there may be little incentive for one of the bottom tea...

mlaird wrote:So, is anybody going to this thing? If teams are dropping out left and right, including the defending champions, and the sponsor dropped out, where does that leave those of us who like matching questions and Disney movies in Spanish?

I did google searches for The Punch, The Play, The Catch, The Drive, and The Shot. For the latter four, the intended event is in the top three and dominates the list of results. For The Punch, there is only one positive ID in the first 30 results, that being the Amazon page for the Feinstein book. I...

For the following sports, write either one or two questions. If the two question option is taken, then one question must be a tossup and one question must be a bonus. Baseball: One question must be major league baseball. A second question can be another type of baseball, but it is fine if it is MLB....

... (Oddly enough, I think they use the previous year's questions for this. After experiencing the Science Bowl for a couple years, I think this isn't as bad as I thought at first. When they run the tournaments, they use a different question packet for each match, so different matches running at th...

I know Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt does or did host one or two middle school tournaments each year. Those tournaments occurred Friday evenings and featured such schools as Martin Luther King MS, Kenmoor MS, Walker Mill MS, and St. Anselm's. It has been almost nine years since I gradua...

Given I was not present at this tournament, I cannot comment on how good the questions were or how well the individual tournaments were run. However, I applaud Fred, Evan, et al for their efforts and for coming up with the idea for this tournament. I did not learn of this tournament until three week...

Am I the only one who thinks ITT stands for individual time trial? Now that it's a rest day, what do we know? 1) You have one dumb rider who thinks he can't get caught doping EPO. 2) Liggett is going to great lengths trying to pump up the excitement about the Tour. Some of it is deserved, but I gue...

It is possible that Saturday evening will feature some live playing of such popular quizbowl side events as ACF Pyramid, ACF World Series of Culture, or Quizbowler in Your Bed, depending on whether there is interest and we get done with the regular tournament efficiently. Quizbowler in Your Bed sou...

The answer is wrong. Any answer that mentions or implies both brothers ("Wright Brothers") is wrong. The only time to prompt is if the person answers with "Wright." The question was uniquely identifying after the fourth word.

Exxon is one of the few companies that's actually doing well enough right now to have money to throw around, so I could believe it. According to Rush Limbaugh or some other political commentator on the radio today that my friend had on, Exxon-Mobil is getting out of the gasoline business in the U.S...

My main argument against paying moderators for their moderating duties with money for labor at a standard quizbowl tournament is it implies a professionalization of moderation. Professionalization can lead to credentialization, which means bureaucracy, which means paying administrators, which if the...

Walt Whitman defeated Thomas Jefferson A in the championship final to win the 2008 PACE NSC. The two teams were tied at 360 after regulation. Whitman dominated the overtime period of three tossups and bonuses to win 440-390. The semifinalists were Dorman A and Wilmington Charter A. Dorman B and Detr...

Congratulations on earning a spot in nationals. However, regardless of whether you got in or not, you are only just finishing high school. There are much bigger things out there, things that do not rely on stupid rules involving use of calculators, degrees of pencil erasure, and the scantron machine...

<snip> Thanks to all the teams that showed up to our tournament, especially those that stuck around until 7:30 to finish up the playoffs. Look out for our Fall Tournament, which we currently plan to host on Saturday, September 27th (although this date may change, look for a formal announcement). Wh...

I would like to thank the TRASH staff for running a very good tournament and drawing me to Chattanooga, which I have finally visited after about 50 UTC tournaments post the start of my collegiate quizbowl career in 2000. I also thank them for being very inviting of constructive criticism, so in addi...

I am putting forth this idea because of the last two tournaments I have been to. The first tournament, Penn Bowl in January, featured all rounds being read off of laptops. I had a chance to read one of the rounds during the day. My opinion of running a tournament with all laptops instead of paper pa...

I believe it should be the other way around if the object is to get the best teams to HSNCT. For example, at many tournaments in the MD/DC/VA region, many highly competitive teams would often miss a 10% cutoff. Even with the 15% cutoff it is difficult due to the large number of strong teams in the ...

Seriously, all due respect to our colleague from Brown, but any athletic competition at which a Ukranian is best is not a sport in my book. And though I have tremendous respect for the fitness of those dudes, as said above, it doesn't make for compelling TV. And there's a very low athlete-stripper-...

To fill the foul void of meaninglessness which is the period between the end of the NBA Finals and the beginning of college football, how about some thoughts on the NBA draft? Tour de France, dude. It bridges the post-analysis of the NBA Draft and Wimbledon and the start of NFL training camps. Gran...

Alright, I'm officially registering the "Archrivals" (UNC/Duke) team; we'll have the travel discount and two buzzer systems. Someone from Wake should be posting here or contacting you sometime soon confirming their team's setup. You may want to email the tournament director. As far as I know, this ...

1. Word of mouth is probably the best way to recruit people. In fact, that was how I was recruited in high school. Peer pressure can be used both positively and negatively. Teens are usually more likely to try something and even stick with it based on someone their own age rather than an authority f...

I agree with Chris. One of my criticisms of that Bowles tossup is that all the titles are bunched at the end. I'm really not sure what the point of that backloading is supposed to be, as I find it hard to imagine that many players have memorized lists of Paul Bowles short story titles. In general, ...

Mildly tangential comment: does anyone find it odd that New York schools often fare quite well in Chip's tournaments, but don't hold a candle to decent teams in NAQT and other, more legitimate (if you will) formats? Perhaps more outreach needs to be done to expose them to these other formats. Perha...